Summer Movie League 2016: Week 1

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I’ve decided that I’m going to do a weekly recap of the Fantasy Movie League that I am doing with my friends. This will be a weekly feature from now through the end of summer. A summary of our league rules and our draft/teams can be found here.

Recap:

This past weekend was the start of our summer season, and it is definitely a marathon and not a sprint, as only two rostered movies opened this weekend. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice opened for Joe, which he spent $30 on to acquire. It opened to a huge weekend of $170.1 million. Unfortunately for Joe, the movie was skewered by critics, generating a Tomatometer score of 29% on Rotten Tomatoes, with a total of 271 reviews (as of Monday). 29% of 170.1 ends up being just over $49 million. It is highly unlikely that Joe will hit the $250 million cap with Bats v Supes, as it would need to make $862 million domestically, making it the 2nd highest grossing movie ever, which is not happening.

It will be interesting to see how much repeat business this movie makes as a poor critical rating usually means bad word of mouth and lesser repeat business. Next weekend should be very telling. It got a CinemaScore rating of a B, and according to Deadline.com, based on it’s opening weekend numbers compared to similar films, it could end up around $383 million. If $383 is the number, that would be very bad news for Joe, because that would mean that he would only be banking $111 million for his $30 investment. But it’s possible that it could have some extra box office legs as the next big release is not until mid-April with Disney’s live-action The Jungle Book.

The other movie that came out this weekend was My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, which Tim bought for $4. It made $18.1 million at the box office, and was similarly derided by the critics to the tune of 24% on the Tomatometer, based on 108 reviews (as of Monday), resulting in roughly $4 million for Tim. That $18 million is on the high end of most of the estimates I saw, as most of them had it closer to $15 with a potential for as high as $19 or $20 million. Despite the 24% T-Meter, it had a CinemaScore of an A-.

I still have a hard time believing this one comes anywhere close to matching the performance of the first film, given that it’s been 14 years between movies and the unique box office path My Big Fat Greek Wedding took to its $241 million domestic earnings. Hard to judge how this one will perform, given the disparity between it’s CinemaScore and its T-Meter. The drop from Weekend 1 to Weekend 2 will be telling.

Preview:

No significant releases this coming weekend, so nothing much to say here. Joe and Tim will be able to pad their numbers for another week.